On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 03:28:31AM +0000, Jon Carey <greyw01f at hotmail.com> wrote: > Think of it, though. If anyone could get to be a God, ie, "offered" > divinity, as Sethra has repeatedly been, it would be someone who the > Dragaerans and Easterners alike look upon as super-human. Also, being the > beloved of the daughter of a God can't hurt. I wouldn't be surprised if he > turns out to be Devera's father. The two big problems, of course, are, can > there be incest between souls? and that Mario doesn't seem to be a > sorceror of any skill--but I have to ask, is that important? I think we > tend to equate divine power with evolved mystical and sorcerous skill, but, > like a God would say, I think it's both divinity *and* evolved magic. I > don't think that a being would really *need* any skill in sorcery to meet > the requisites of Godhood, or if he does, that that "sorcery" be as blatant > as the manipulation of amorphia or necrophia. Mario's magic is the magic > of death. The inevitability. It is a *very* powerful, and very > unignorable magic, but people don't really see it as magic as such. But I > think that in many ways, it *is* magical. It's certainly fing mysterious > enough to be. In my opinion the nature of divinity (in speculative fiction, anyway) is the submersion of identity in aspect. That is, in most fantasy worlds, you don't have "a god" who just happens to be a god. Gods are gods OF something, or sometimes of several things, and their powers are derived from their nature. Simply being a powerful sorceror is insufficient to make one a god. But an assassin could take on the role of a God of Death, or a patron god of assassins. Rather than give him powerful sorcery, such a god would instead find his own nature and abilities enhanced to the point of godhood. An excellent example of this would be Cotillion from Erikson's series of novels. Now, Dragaera doesn't have to follow those rules. But the Dragaerean gods appear to have aspects, rather than being merely powerful beings. So I suppose it could happen. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp